We review and discuss the historical development of central ideas and
problems in experimental psychology. The emphasis is placed on the
two dominant problem areas, perception and learning (although we also
study the development of intelligence tests). We begin with the
ancient Greeks and then move rapidly through the beginning of modern
science and the philosophers of the 16th-19th centuries to a review
of the major approaches including Structuralism, Functionalism,
Behaviorism, Gestalt Psychology, Cognitivism and Ecological
Psychology. The format of the course will be seminar/discussion with
plenty of reading and a fair amount of writing (and the occasional
lecture) with essay exams and a research paper.